I just stumbled across this travel piece on TV SF while looking for more info on Pittsburgh Tiki. It's in the "This Week" section, which seems to be a Sunday magazine, from November 21 ,1954. Oh, and catch that byline. Thanks Clementine!

I nudged my dad to rummage through his matchbook collection for any PolyPop artifacts. He came up mostly empty, save a number of Trader Vic's matchbooks from the lengthy era when the Cosmo San Francisco location was open at the same time as the Emeryville location. If I had to guess, this would probably be from between the late 60s and mid 70s.

Didn't quite know where to put this but this seemed to be the most relevant. As I've posted earlier, I was lucky enough to have found this early Tiki Bowl made for Trader Vic's San Francisco by Dickman Walker.

According to the folks at Trader Vic's, this bowl was made for the Trader Vic's San Francisco location which opened in 1951. Unfortunately poor Dickman Walker passed away in 1953. I did some additional research on Dickman Walker and was rather surprised that he was a highly regarded pottery artist of his time. I stumbled upon an article from a 1949 House & Garden magazine entitled "Only in the U.S.A." calling out such mid-century designers as Noguchi, Knoll, and under San Franciscan craftsman - Dickman Walker.

And now we have an actual picture of the man who made the first tiki bowl!

“A Californian by adoption who studied and worked in
Chicago, New York and Houston before coming to the
West Coast. He and his San Francisco studio are dedi-
cated to a sensitive use of clay and glaze. At Gump’s”

I doubt he had ever thought that his "sensitive use of clay and glaze" legacy would be a Tiki bowl that has been copied and reproduced all over the world 60 years straight.

Great find! For being held in high esteem in his time, that man is totally under-documented!

I think maybe you should start a new thread in Collecting Tiki about the Tiki Bowl, with your Walker bowl at the beginning, and then everyone can add their versions underneath and we can try to figure out their origin, year, and differences.

I for one just found this black and yellow version I had not seen before. It has no markings, so I am very curious as to where it might hail from - a Walker it is not, the bowl has the beginnings of that triangular bend, away from the round shape:

Great addition to the thread and an important piece of documentation. I agree with Sven. A new thread would be a great way to figure out a time line and history of these bowls. Thanks for posting.
_________________"Anyone who has ever seen them is thereafter haunted as if by a feverish dream" Karl Woermann